Bi The Way

I thought I’d share a great post on the Queers United Blog about how to coutner the arguments against Gay Marriage:

Its well worth a read, and reiterates a lot of arguments I’ve previously made myself on various web forums so I’m very happy to recommend it.

I’ve spoken to a few people recently who upon learning of my bisexuality, fessed up to having had their own bisexual experiences. All of a sudden bisexuality seems rather common. Everyone’s doing it! Excellent!

However, whilst one girl was happy to admit she’d messed around with some of her girlfriends she was reluctant to describe herself as bisexual, as was guy who admitted regularly having a mutual masturbation session with a friend whilst in boarding school. Both had enjoyed their experiences, the girl, in the absence of a boyfriend was perfectly open to having further sessions with her girlfriends, the guy regarded it as something he did in the past and was no-longer interested in.

What surprised me is why, the girl in particular rejected the bisexual label, she was very insistent that she wasn’t a lesbian and told me she could only ever orgasm with a guy, but that same evening, I’d witnessed her kiss one of her girlfriends dead on the lips whilst the other girl had her arms around her neck, so clearly been intimate with women wasn’t alien to her and unlike the guys homosexual encounters wasn’t something in the past.

So why refuse to identify as bisexual?

Is there some kind of residual homophobia at work here? What’s preventing her from seeing these same-sex encounters as anything other than what they are. Anyone who has the capacity to enjoy both heterosexual and homosexual relations is by definition bisexual. Why the reluctance to admit this?

The guy on the other hand as either grown out of his bisexual phrase (which would be rather Freudian,) or more likely he is a circumstantial bisexual, that is to say he only exhibits homosexual tendencies in the absence of women. As he’s 15 years out of boarding school, he’s unlikely to find himself in a single sex environment at any future time in his life so its fair to conclude that he’ll probably not go down that path again. So whilst he seems a good fit for the “circumstantial bisexual” description, its not really meaningful to push it upon him.

Of course its for everyone to pick their own label rather than to be tagged with one by someone else. But I can’t help but feel that a lot of people shy away from the bisexual label because of the baggage that goes with it. The baggage is entirely a product of people’s misconceptions and the only way for people to challenge these prejudices and misconceptions is for bisexual people to speak out. To do that, we need to be confident enough to stand up and be counted, and that means owning the label for ourselves.

Unfortunately, I don’t think everyone is ready or able to do that. Though at least we know there are a lot more bisexual people masquerading as straight people out there.  And that warms my heart a little bit.

A comment by DaviDC on a previous article has really lead to this post. DaviDC quite rightly observed that every bisexual man he knows seems to have settled with a man having dated a women. The implication is that all bisexual men are really closet gay. In this post I’m going to try to explain how the observation is most likely correct and yet the assumption that all bisexual men are really closet gay is wrong.

DaviDC sounds like a Gay man, he didn’t explicitly state this in his comment but it was implied, and let’s face it, this assumption about bisexual men being closet gay originated in the gay community. It doesn’t surprise me that a lot of gay men make this assumption about bisexuals, but hopefully by the end of this post you’ll understand why they are mistaken.

Firstly you have to understand that bisexuals rarely have a 50:50 attraction to both men and women, there tends to be a bias towards one or the other, (see the Kinsey Scale). If you walk in gay circles then you are more likely to meet bisexuals who lean towards homosexuality, whereas if you walk in straight circles you are more likely to never know that the guy next to you is a straight-leaning bisexual because we’d be too scared you’d react badly if we told you. (Besides, we probably don’t fancy you anyway so why bother to mention it?)

Second, contrary to our media portrayal, most bisexuals are looking for a committed relationship and alternating bisexuals (gender agnostics) like myself are totally monogamous once we enter a relationship. This means eventually we tend settle down with a single partner for life.

If you are a gay-leaning alternating bisexual then you are more likely to settle down in a relationship with a man, so to an outsider looking in you look like you’ve finally accepted your homosexuality. Hence the presumption that all bisexual men are closet gay.

As straight leaning bisexuals are less likely to come out, we remain more invisible and don’t figure in people preconceptions as much as our gay-leaning bisexual brothers. In short, whilst this preconception is based on genuine observation, the observations are a natural result of statistical chance rather than an absence of true male bisexuality.

Hope that explains things.

You think people get it, then realise they really don’t understand bisexuality at all. Even my brother, who was the first person I came out to and explained things to properly still seemed to miss the point.

Recently I’ve been dating a girl “V” and I explained to him that it felt a little strange to be in a relationship again after such a long time being single. And he turns around and asks me “Doesn’t being a relationship with a girl conflict with your sexuality?”

I was a little surprised and for a brief moment I wondered if he only expected me to date hermaphrodites. So I asked him to clarify what it meant?

“Well,” he says, “seen as you are bisexual, don’t you want to date men as well?”

Ah - Once again I have to explain the concept of the Alternating Bisexual. I’m almost sick of blogging about this but its a recurring theme. So can I just explain once again that I don’t need a man AND a women to make me happy, as a bisexual I can simply be happy with a man OR a women.

Its not a difficult concept to grasp, why do people have such trouble with it?

Well we are two weeks into the Lambeth conference and the bishops in attendance finally have the opportunity to debate the burning issue of the day, namely the Church’s stance on homosexuality. The Lambeth conference, held once every 10 years, gathers the bishops of the Anglican Communion around the world. However, notable in his absence is the openly Gay bishop of New Hampshire Gene Robinson who was ordained in the Episcopal Church 5 years ago. He wasn’t invited to the conference, yet has been present in the public galleries and been running his own ‘fringe’ events.

Meanwhile the traditionalists, not satisfied with Gene Robinson’s exclusion from the conference, have this time boycotted the Lambeth conference because the Bishop’s who ordained Gene Robinson, were invited. Instead they held a rival conference in Jerusalem called GAFCON, or as I like to call it “Gaff-Con”.

The head of the Anglican Communion the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has been desperately trying to hold the Anglican Church together over this divisive issue. He known to be fairly ambivalent towards homosexuality but has been unwilling to exclude traditionalists, by coming out on the side of the liberals. In effect he’s doing the annoying job of walking a tight-rope and pleasing no-one. He’s keen to get Anglican’s to recognise that the values they share outweighs their differences of opinion on homosexuality.

However, the conservatives are angry that the bible’s very specific ban on homosexuality is been ignored, and to a point I can understand why. Christianity as a religion, survives based on the teaching of the bible and the gospels, once you choose to disregard one passage of the bible, you throw the rest of it into question. The bible holds no authority as we are allowed to “cherry pick” our beliefs.

What traditionalists fail to realise is that most Christians already do just this, as contrary to the directions of the Old Testament, we no longer put children to death for cursing their parents, stone adulterers or execute homosexuals as is mandated by the Book of Leviticus. (We leave that to hard-line Islamists in Saudi Arabia and Iran.)

The Conservatives within the Anglican Communion singularly fail to realise that they have already lost the argument. To prove this lets examine the logic of the debate:

The biblical prohibition of homosexuality is immediately followed by the penalty for homosexual acts.

“If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.”

Leviticus 20:13 (New King James Version)

Now if the Conservatives within the Anglican Church are advocating a return to more literal biblical teachings then I suggest we lock them up quick, as such a view would constitute a hate-crime! However, when mentioning the bible’s prohibition of homosexuality, they rather conveniently ignore any mention of the penalty. Hmm, well either they are trying to  disguise their ill intentions towards homosexuals or it means they have already abandoned biblical literalism themselves.

You’ve got to admit, its hypocritical of conservative Christians to say liberals are abandoning the original teachings of the bible, unless the conservatives are prepared to be literal themselves. So I’d say liberal Anglicans have already won the argument, wouldn’t you?

Well its been a few weeks since I’ve had any major crushes or lusts after other guys, so I’m officially on a “straight streak”. I guess this contrasts nicely with the “Gay Days“, I’ve described previously. Its kind of weird going through a period like this where your attractions are almost exclusively heterosexual, it makes you kind of question what you are doing writing a blog like this. What authority do I have to talk about queer issues when I haven’t seen a guy that makes me want to rip his shirt off in what seems like ages? (Truth be told its been about 3 weeks.)

I guess I’ve been rather immersed in straight culture of late, football, outdoor activities, not your typical ‘urban chic’ gay scene. But that’s a cliché too right? Queer culture isn’t limited to disco bars and outdoor cafes. I mean Bisexual and Gay people like sports as well, don’t they? Still the overtly straight-macho environment doesn’t present the best opportunities for honest self-expression.

Does simply surrounding yourself with straight-dom make you straight? I don’t think so and I sure as hell hope not. But I have to admit these straight-streaks leave you rather confused, you end us questioning your sexuality all over again and these horrible thoughts like: “Have I made a huge mistake in coming out?” start rattling around your head.

Still for now I’m philosophical about things, sexuality is a bit like weight, it changes, swinging around your personal average. Some times of year your feel really fat, others you are flexing those abs. Bisexuality is a similar state of affairs. Your level of attraction to one gender or the other varies with time. Besides, who knows my “straight streak” might be coming to an end - the latest copy of GT has just arrived.

In a speech on the 7th of July, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg called on schools to recognise their “unique role” in tackling homophobia and called for better monitoring of homophobic incidents in schools. The fully story is here: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-8260.html

What is probably unique about this speech is that its the first by a mainstream political leader to include even the remote mention of bisexuals. Nick Clegg’s frequent references to ‘LGB’ rather than the ubiquitous ‘Lesbian and Gay’ can only be hailed as progress for bisexual recognition. Whilst we are still relegated to a single letter of an acronym, unlike recent Stonewall reports we are at least acknowledged.

It was a good speech, recognising that a minority of homophobic parents still poison their children’s thinking and that schools have a role in educating children against homophobia, something that presently they regularly fail to do.

As Nick Clegg rightly points out LGB pupils have higher levels of truancy, drop-out, mental health problems, panic attacks and eating disorders than straight students and more than half of LGB adults who were bullied at school contemplated self-harm or suicide. And four in ten had attempted it at least once.

Speaking as a bisexual guy who has previously self-harmed and attempted suicide, If this isn’t reason to be concerned about homophobic bullying then I don’t know what is. Bisexuals are more likely to be closet than their lesbian and gay counterparts, and whilst as a result, our outwardly homosexual cousins are more likely to bear the brunt of homophobic bullying, ’straight acting’ bisexuals cannot feel any more comfortable ‘being themselves’ in a virulently homophobic environment than lesbians or gays. Unlike our friends in pink, bisexuals have no political movement speaking out for them, no real separate identity, and bisexual teenagers must feel terribly isolated and alone. No wonder that so many of us first ‘pick a side’ before ‘broadening our horizons’.

Clearly more needs to be done to raise awareness of bisexuality, particularly in schools and leaders like Nick Clegg have a role to play in that, for now its atleast good that we have been acknowledged by use of an acromym, next time it would be nice to be called by name.

I guess I’m unusual in so much as I’m an out straight-leaning bisexual, there aren’t that many of us. Though by virtue of the internet, thankfully we can connect with others in the same boat and not feel quite so isolated. I wouldn’t like to say I’m proud of my sexuality, because that makes it sound like I think its better than anyone else’s, but I’m not ashamed of it either and I have pride in myself as rounded person. Fuck gay-pride, bi-pride or whatever, I have Dave-pride.

My sexuality isn’t something I feel a burning need to celebrate, its a characteristic, its part of me, not the whole person. I just get pissed off when people prejudice me because of it, hence the writing of this blog. Still I think its important to be out about your sexuality, I really do. The reason is lack of visibility, bisexuality cannot be taken seriously unless there are genuinely ‘out’ bisexuals prepared to stand-up and be counted. We are the collective beacon for everyone struggling to come to terms with their bisexuality in the face of societies expectation that we declare sides, straight or gay.

Still, whilst I’m out to anyone that asks, and I’ve specifically come out to my immediate family and close friends, further I’m out to anyone who has bothered to read my facebook profile, there are still some people I cannot bring myself to tell.

The first is my Nan, she’s 93 and desperate for me to make her a great-grandmother before she dies. My cousin has already made her a great-grandmother twice over, but he lives in Vancover Canada and she has never met her great-grandchildren, so in my Nan’s words, “this doesn’t really count.” If I told her I was bisexual this would crush her, because she’d assume I meant gay, and in her mind this would mean no great-grand-kids.

There’s no way I could explain this to her, because she’s so deaf she wouldn’t hear the pertinent details and I’m not sure she has the capacity to understand it anyway, not with a life so shaped by a strict Catholic upbringing.

The other person I who I haven’t told is another older friend, Ken is 78, I affectionally call him “my adopted granddad” as both my grandfathers have passed away, and he’s the only other over 75 I’m close to. We’re good mates and we have the kind of relationship I would have liked to have enjoyed with my grandfathers were they still alive. IE: We go-out for a beer, bite to eat and generally help each other out on our pet projects. Which generally involves me fixing problems with his computer and him giving me a lift when I find myself stranded somewhere. But I guess like a lot of people his age, Ken has opinions about the world having got worse as he’s gotten older. I’m sure that this is borne out of a resistance to change and it happens to us all, but I’m still the right side of 30 and I’m a progressive. I keep telling myself that when I’m in my 70’s, I’m still going to be a radical progressive. Its easy to say, but in all probability the world will have probably moved at a faster pace than I have and the chances are that I’ll become like Ken, convinced the world was a better place in ‘my day’.

When you get to know someone, you can normally determine the ‘age’ they settled in. The era when they felt the socio-political spectrum best fitted their sense of self, for me it was the mid-late 90’s. For my parents it was the early 70’s. For Ken it was the 50’s. During the 50’s there was very little acceptance of homosexuality (they still sent people to prison for buggery) and even the more progressive people of the day, (of which I’m sure my friend was one,) tolerated homosexual acts provided it was kept very firmly in the closet and out of view.

I could be doing him an injustice by not trusting him with my sexuality, but I fear that Ken, like my Nan probably doesn’t have the capacity to understand it without first battling with some inherent personal prejudice. Still, as far as our friendship goes, my sexuality is irrelevant, I’m single, I date occasionally but there are no serious relationships on the horizon and until they are and one of them is with a guy, there isn’t really anything to explain.

Still for now, as far as older people are concerned, I remain closeted. They are the one group I feel unable to come out to, even my football team (who I haven’t explcitly told) have access to my Facebook profile, but the older generation I find are the hardest to come out to.

Am I being unfair, misjudging them? Possibly, but I really don’t know how to broach the subject with the senior citizens in my life.

So you suspect your boyfriend or husband is bisexual, but your not certain? You suspect he might like guys, but what are the signs and how can you tell? After all bisexual and bi-curious men don’t wear badges, we don’t have a dress code, and we are notoriously closeted. So how do you know if your boyfriend is bisexual?

You could trawl through his computer looking for gay porn, or check his credit card for membership of swingers sites, hire a private detective to follow him when he takes the dog out for a walk. Perhaps even have a look under his mattress for stashed copies of Gay Times.

But by far the simplest solution is just come right out and ask him, though before you do I’d recommend you read my earlier post on How to talk to your bisexual boyfriend.

A lot of women wrongly assume that just because their boyfriend is bisexual that this means the end of their relationship. It doesn’t or at least it shouldn’t. Very few guys who come out as bisexual want to leave their girlfriends, and not all of them want to start dating men on the side.

If you are going to ask him, then its got to phrased with genuine interest and support, don’t challenge him. Just ask him gently and make it clear that you’ll be supportive whatever his reply. If you are not capable of being supportive, then you don’t deserve an honest answer.

Obviously his answer may have repercussions for your relationship, but its just as likely that it won’t. A lot of bisexuals are monogamous and contrary to popular believe we won’t freak out just because we’re in a committed relationship with a woman and can’t get any cock. We’re rational normal people and invariably all we look for is a loving partner who we can share our life with.

Our bisexuality shouldn’t matter, but clearly you want to know and I guess where it impacts you, you have a right to know, but the only real honest to god sure fire way to find out if someone is bisexual is to ask them - nobody lies when they say ‘yes’.

The alternating bisexual is a rare breed, or so it seems, as I’ve come across very few, certainly amongst men. For the uninitiated, the alternating bisexual is the person who has the capacity to fall in love with either men or women, but chooses only one partner at a time and is usually monogamous.

One relationship might be heterosexual,  and then after that relationship ends, the next relationship might be homosexual, after that ends they may revert to a straight relationship. Though in theory the alternating bisexual can settle down with a partner for life and no-one would ever know they were bisexual, they’d just assume they were straight or gay depending on their current choice of partner (though that could also be said of a lot of bisexuals who tend not to flaunt secondary partners).

I would generally describe myself as an alternating bisexual, mostly because I wouldn’t want my partner to be sleeping with other people and consequently I would do them the same courtesy. I just don’t get the need for multiple partners, one at a time is enough work! An just to dispel another bisexual myth, I don’t have a burning desire for sex with a guy AND sex with a woman. I just have a burning desire for sex. LOL!

No seriously, my sex drive is pretty moderate, it revolves around love making rather than just getting off. Hell I can do that myself! I’m far more into foreplay and oral than I am into penetrative sex, though granted I won’t say no. But equally I don’t need a penis or a vagina to make me happy. I fall in love with the person, not what does or doesn’t dangle between their legs.

Why post about this? Well, frankly I’m pissed off that just because I say I’m bisexual, people assume I’m incapable of entering into a loving monogamous relationship. I think its partly because I’m a guy and it’s assumed we want to play the field anyway, so if you are bisexual, then its somehow assumed that you want to play the field with both genders. Worse its assumed that you’ll never be satisfied having sex with just one woman and that you’ll always desire a man, or vice versa.

Well I kinda desire a man at the moment because I’m pissed off with women. But it would be wrong of me to judge the entire female gender on the basis of my recent experiences with woman and their reaction to my bisexuality. So I’m still technically keeping my options open. And as I’m predominantly attracted to women, the odds are still stacked in favour of my next relationship being heterosexual.

So if there are any sexy, well-adjusted men out there get your bids in quick. *grin* I don’t plan to be available for long.